Party Politics - The first decades

These differences were much in evidence from the very beginning of the
two-party system, in the 1790s. Few were the foreign policy decisions in
that decade that were not affected by partisan concerns. Even George
Washington's Farewell Address, to this day the major statement of
the need for American freedom of action in foreign affairs (it warned
against "permanent alliances"), must be seen in light of the
1796 election. The French minister to Philadelphia, Pierre Adet, upset
over the pro-British Jay's Treaty and America's failure to
honor the 1778 alliance with France, worked hard to have Thomas Jefferson
win the 1796 presidential race over the Federalist candidate, John Adams.
That interference influenced Washington (and his coauthor Alexander
Hamilton, a bitter foe of Jefferson) to issue the Farewell Address that
warned Americans against tying themselves to the fortunes of any
"foreign influence." The historian Alexander DeConde put it
succinctly: "Although cloaked in phrases of universal or timeless
application, the objectives of the address were practical, immediate, and
partisan."

Party politics and electoral strategizing also permeated the atmosphere in
the lead-up to the War of 1812 and indeed helped bring on the hostilities.
As many historians have demonstrated, the increasingly bitter partisan
struggle over domestic and foreign policy in the early years of the
century, exacerbated by the effects of the war between Britain and France,
grew into corrosive mutual distrust. Federalists and Republicans were
deeply split on the best policy vis-à-vis Great Britain, and the
vote for war followed partisan lines—81 percent of Republicans in
both houses voted for war (98 to 23), and all Federalists voted nay (39 to
0).

But President Madison's concerns went deeper than defending against
Federalist attacks on his commercial warfare policy. He also had to worry
about dissension among fellow Republicans and the possibility that these
"malcontents"—who wanted a tougher line against the
British—might move to create an anti-Madison ticket in 1812. By the
spring of 1811, sympathetic legislators were warning Madison that he had
to do something to unify the party, and by July of that year the pressures
of domestic politics were making it very hard for the administration to
agree to anything short of Britain's total capitulation to American
demands. According to the historian J. C. A. Stagg, for Madison
"there seemed to be only one course of action that would be both
honorable and effective. He could regain the initiative at home and abroad
by moving toward the positions advocated for so long by his Republican
opponents. If he did not do so, there was the possibility that they would
coalesce into a formidable anti-administration party, make the issue of
war and preparedness wholly their own, and turn them against him in the
months to come." In Stagg's words, "the
nation's honor, the president's political salvation, and the
unity of the Republican Party required that American policy now be
directed toward war." What's more, the strategy worked: by
May 1812 the malcontents had faded and a sufficiently large Republican
majority had emerged in both houses to renominate Madison. The declaration
of war followed in June.

This is not to suggest that Madison's fears for his domestic
political standing alone drove the decision making that led to war with
Great Britain. Monocausal history is seldom satisfactory history. The
violations of American maritime rights, the impressment of American
seamen, British incitement of hostile Native Americans, American designs
on Canada and Florida, the depressing effects of British policy on
American farm prices—each of these mattered as well, as did the
long-standing partisan squabbling between Federalists and Republicans. It
is also clear, though, that the president's perceived political
needs, specifically his concern about possibly losing his party's
nomination in 1812, shaped American policy in crucial ways. In particular,
understanding why the war happened when it did—in a presidential
election year, and with the incumbent in a precarious position at
home—requires understanding the high-stakes struggle within the
Republican Party.

Consider again the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. In a provocative work bearing
the prosaic title
The Making of the Monroe Doctrine
(1975), the historian Ernest R. May rejected the claim of Perkins and
others that conceptions of national interest and foreign policy were
supreme in the origins of the doctrine. Instead, May argued, party
politics were decisive. ("The positions of the policymakers were
determined less by conviction than by ambition.") In May's
view the outcome of the foreign policy debates can only be understood in
relation to the struggle for the presidency, because the Monroe Doctrine
was "actually a byproduct of an election campaign." The
threat of intervention by the European powers into the Western Hemisphere
was nonexistent, and American officials knew it. As a result, they could
play politics with the British proposal for a joint policy statement; John
Quincy Adams opposed joint action while his bitter presidential rival John
C. Calhoun fervently supported it. Adams's candidacy would have
been hurt by consummation of an alliance with Britain because the British
were thoroughly unpopular among the U.S. electorate. As secretary of
state, Adams would have been attacked for joining with the British even if
he opposed the alliance in private cabinet discussions. Calhoun pushed for
acceptance of the London government's offer, knowing Adams would be
blamed for it, while President Monroe, anxious to leave the presidency
with his reputation intact, gave in to Adams to avoid a fight that might
tarnish his record. It is a compelling argument, made in part, as May
noted, on the basis of "inference from circumstantial
evidence." One does not have to embrace May's thesis in its
entirety—Were officials really so certain that no foreign danger
existed?—to see that party politics were instrumental in the making
of the doctrine.

And party politics were instrumental in foreign policymaking at various
other times as well in the decades before John Hay took such delight at
the outcome of the war against Spain. Here one thinks, for example, of the
debate over whether to recognize Greek independence in 1823 (which, like
the Monroe Doctrine, was intimately bound up with the 1824 presidential
race); of President Franklin Pierce's attempt to acquire Cuba in
1854 in order to placate proslavery leaders in the American South; and of
Grover Cleveland's decision—made partly for partisan
reasons—not to submit the 1884 Berlin agreement on Africa's
partition (of which he basically approved) to the Senate for approval.

Nor did things change after the century turned. The Wilson
administration's original decision to postpone recognition of
Bolshevik Russia in 1918 was not primarily the product of political
pressure within the United States, but the fact that this nonrecogition
continued for fifteen years and was intimately connected with domestic
politics. A few politicians seem to have felt that nonrecognition would
damage the Soviet Union or protect the United States against real dangers.
Many more were convinced that taking a stand against the Soviet Union and
domestic radicals was "good politics" or that those who
openly favored diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union would suffer
political punishment. Consequently, practical politics in the United
States served to prevent these two major powers from discussing their
differences until the need for foreign trade enabled Franklin D. Roosevelt
to reestablish diplomatic relations in 1933.

In 1936 and again in 1940, Roosevelt allowed reelection concerns to affect
his approach to the Nazi menace. In the late summer of 1936, Roosevelt
told journalists of his desire to convene a conference of world leaders to
discuss ways to assure the peace of the world; at the same time, he ruled
out taking any steps prior to the election that could open him to
Republican charges that he was embroiling the United States in overseas
commitments. Four years later, Roosevelt's hesitation in finalizing
the destroyers-for-bases deal with Great Britain—he delayed for
nearly four months after receiving Winston Churchill's desperate
pleas for destroyers—owed much to his fear that Republican
challenger Wendell Willkie might use the issue to rouse isolationist
sentiment and thereby cost Roosevelt the election that fall. Only after
Willkie agreed not to make the transaction a campaign issue was the deal
struck. Overall during that critical year, Roosevelt moved cautiously on
foreign policy, concerned that open diplomatic moves would evoke
isolationist predictions of U.S. involvement in the fighting and undermine
his chances for a third term.